


like coming home

by ilia



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Boys Kissing, Figure Skater Felix, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Rugby Player Sylvain, Thoughts on home and homelessness, implied eating disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27134914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilia/pseuds/ilia
Summary: Felix and Sylvain loiter at their spot to avoid going home.-Felix and Sylvain make home here every night, after their respective practices and before the absolute latest they must leave to make it through front doors before the bell tolls curfew. They burrow into the comfort of their spot, this worn plastic booth, and spin a nonverbal tale of pretend as though they are children again, as though they're young enough again to make a house of sticks and rock and the felled branches of trees and come home to one another and even be married, when their hatred of home manifested as a charming game that Sylvain never, ever lets Felix forget.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 52





	like coming home

**Author's Note:**

> For sweet Max, who deserves better than my best. Happy birthday, love.

It’s evening in Faerghus, and it storms.

It’s one of those evenings, the sort that drives the citizens indoors, the sort where the rain comes down in sheets both sharp and cold and paints a cruel hint of the winter to come across asphalt streets. It’s rain that won't last long—soon, it’ll turn to snow, and then there will be feet of it.

And then he won’t be able to ride his bike to school any longer.

Felix and Sylvain sit across from one another in the town’s least impressive diner. The booth they occupy is the sort that might be found anywhere; red, plastic-leather cushions, and an old wooden tabletop that over the course of the years has seen many spills, some chunks gouged from its flesh, the phone number of a nemesis marked into the side.

It’s one of those things that should have been replaced long ago. But perhaps that’s why Felix likes it.

He runs his hands down it now, hands ruddied at the knuckles from the last time he tried to break through the fucking wall of his insufferable room at the manor—at home. The Fraldarius estate isn’t like this table, not in the slightest; it has nothing of character, nothing chipped or gauged or sullied. It is kept up; pristine. It is swept and cared for and held as sacred almost as though there’s anything important in that house at all. But Felix knows better than to be fooled by appearances.

He casts biting orange eyes out the thick diner window and watches the waters turn to neon pools beyond.

Nighttime. Late. He doesn’t know what time it is precisely, and he doesn’t care. Sylvain will keep Felix as accountable for curfew as Felix needs to be. Sylvain, who sits across from him, all wools and leathers and reds and impatient, dissatisfied eyes. The ruinous tip of his mechanical pencil sinks deep into the massacred wood of the table.

Felix looks at him now, at the initials Sylvain is so intent to gauge, though it doesn’t much matter. He knows what he’ll find before he sees it.

“Idiot.”

Sylvain merely laughs. “Yeah, yeah. Say whatever you want, Fe. Our love'll be memorialized here for generations to come.”

Felix sniffs. “Until the microwave from the fucking seventies decides to blow and the place is incinerated.”

“Or that.” Sylvain’s insufferable scratching stops. He angles one of those electric grins towards Felix, and Felix turns away, reddening and uneasy beneath the intensity of that smile. He knows better than to stare at the sun.

The music is something old; an old-timey jingle kept predominately to the kitchens of the diner that warbles out indistinguishable over the clatter of work and the register and the chatter of patrons. It’s a subtle asterisk on the end of the diner’s humble thought; gentle background static. A barmaid totters past. Her tray wafts the saccharine scent of syrup.

Felix opens his mouth to say something, and bites his tongue. His gaze wanders the thick line of Sylvain’s lashes before he turns back towards the window.  _ Open _ glares out to the neigh-empty asphalt lot beyond.

He pretends not to notice the heart around their initials that’s been added. He pretends it doesn’t turn his belly molten.

Felix and Sylvain make home here every night, after their respective practices and before the absolute latest they must leave to make it through front doors before the bell tolls curfew. They burrow into the comfort of  _ their spot _ , this worn plastic booth, and spin a nonverbal tale of pretend as though they are children again, as though they're young enough again to make a house of sticks and rock and the felled branches of trees and come home to one another and even be married, when their hatred of home manifested as a charming game that Sylvain never, ever lets Felix forget.

Felix and Sylvain get through school just to do it, because it’s better, perhaps, than staying at home; Sylvain has a monster of a brother and two parents who simply don’t understand, will never understand, and Felix lives with a father and a ghost and an estate so grand it makes him feel even less significant, less important. And so he chooses school, instead, where at least he can see Sylvain even if he has to see everyone else too, and the ice rink down the block from campus where he can skate and jump and fly and burn callouses into his feet and tear himself apart bit by bit so that he is rebuilt stronger, better.

And when he gets off and slips sweats over his leggings, Sylvain is always waiting with that insufferable fucking look. The look Felix loves, even though he’s sworn to himself not to. Expectant. Proud. Disgusting.

And so together they walk to the diner as they had this night too. Sylvain, with the toes of his rugby shoes scuffing along the pavement and Felix beside him in the street, boots trodding carelessly through the amassing puddles. As Sylvain had waxed poetic about some girl from calculus and Felix wondered vaguely if he could just kill her off for the sake of not having to hear about her any longer.

—As Sylvain had held the door for Felix and beckoned him into the warmth of their hidden enclave with a wink and the heat had crept up Felix’s neck and he had been reminded all too easily just why he wants to do away with Sylvain’s newest obsession.

“I told my parents,” Sylvain says suddenly, and startles Felix from his thoughts—from watching the rain run down the windows like thick dark blood and thinking himself into the darkness.

“Told them what?”

Sylvain’s pencil gouges a triumphant chunk from the wooden table. “That I’m into guys."

It hits Felix like a fucking bat. Like a car. Like an  _ asteroid _ . He swallows a mouthful of questions.

“You’re gay?”

Sylvain shrugs.

“Thought you liked girls.”

“Like them all.” Sylvain’s smile is wry. “Thought it was worth the effort, though, of coming clean. If I like boys it should be enough, right? Enough to turn them away from me and back onto him. Enough for my parents to see how damn worthless I am.”

“Oh?”

“Miklan doesn’t like boys,” Sylvain says, and shrugs.

“And what did they say?” Felix asks, and leans forward. His fingers curl on the table. His pulse thunders and pounds. Fuck.  _ Fuck _ .

“That it was a phase."

Finally, Sylvain sets down the pencil. The carved  _ F + S _ glare up, accusingly, towards them both.

And Felix feels as though his chest might explode.

He sits in his seat, rigid, and when he licks his lips he tastes sweat from the rink. His skates sit unceremoniously in the bag he’s tossed on the seat beside him. He sits there, and curls his fingers into a fist until his nails nip at his palm, and commands himself into calm, because Sylvain being bisexual or whatever doesn’t mean Felix has any chance at all, because he’s a stray, a mange, he’s the kid in the corner with headphones and black and the ugly, unapproachable scowl and Sylvain fucking glows as though he’s bitten off a piece of the sun. Felix is lucky enough, loathe as he is to think it, that Sylvain affords him these nights together at all.

Because otherwise nights spent at home are achingly lonely for them both. They discuss it in depth when their parents’ eyes are turned away, when they can slip out their phones or hide away in their rooms under the preamble of being sick or tired or studying for an exam and find some assurance in the brightly lit screen and the little bubble animation that means the other is typing back, that they’re  _ heard. _ Sitting here in the diner is a better alternative as their drink orders—soda for Sylvain, water or coffee for Felix—pile up and the cluster of used plastic straws accumulates in front of them like some post-apocalyptic forest, when they at least  _ have _ one another.

For what it’s worth.

When Felix looks up at Sylvain again, those amber eyes are on him. Felix swallows. Sylvain says nothing in turn.

He beckons the waitress over and orders pancakes and Felix’s stomach twists.

“You’ll share with me, Sylvain decides. Felix shakes his head.

“Too many calories.”

“So get fat.”

“Can’t make my jumps if I’m fat.”

“Aww,  _ Fe _ ,” Sylvain sighs. 

It’s enough to placate him for now.

They sit across from one another, and Sylvain demolishes the stack of cakes and glistening bacon with sounds befitting a fucking farm animal, and Felix’s fingers curl into themselves as the smells twist his gut and he wonders how much longer the two of them can do this. Another few months, perhaps, before Sylvain graduates and Felix is left alone and after the rink, he’ll drag his aching feet back to the cavernous Fraldarius estate and do his best not to feel the grate of his father’s eyes along his shoulders as they navigate around one another and neglect to talk because there’s nothing to say when there are more ghosts in the house than living and everything to discuss has already been said.

_ It should have been you, instead. _

Disassociation. The hard smack of his joints as he lands tricky jumps. The way his blade gouges into the ice. Skating isn’t graceful, isn’t beautiful; it’s ruthless, it’s war, it’s triumph over gravity and the elements and for that, Felix finds himself  _ drawn _ .

Sylvain’s head of fire greeting him off of the rink. Sometimes he gives Felix a hug—insists and insists until Felix is begrudgingly drawn in. Sylvain smells sweet and his arms are always warm and the pulse in his neck pounds strong and steady. For that, Felix finds himself drawn, too.

“So, what do  _ you _ like?”

Felix jumps a damned foot. “Excuse me?”

“What.” Sylvain takes a languid break. He stuffs a fork full of cake into his mouth. “Do you like, Felix Fraldarius? Men? Women? Both, like me?”

“Why does it matter?"

“I told you mine.” And Sylvain’s eyes are guarded, and Felix loathes when he gets like this, when he slips into the easy, lazy, narcissistic mask his last name has forced him to carry with him wherever he goes, the sort Felix could never replicate. Felix is nothing but fire, consuming; Sylvain instead is frigid. Ice.

Felix feels it now, lapping at his insides as his sharp orange eyes gouge a hole in Sylvain’s head. Obvious, too obvious, the way he feels. Because he doesn’t just  _ like _ . Because he doesn’t just  _ have interest _ . Felix’s want is a terrible, consuming thing. His want has him clawing at his neck in the middle of the night, aching with how desperately—how painfully—he  _ misses _ Sylvain. The tears that wet his cheeks and neck when he awakens from yet another dream of Sylvain’s mouth on his. The raw rage that seizes him at the sight of another of his best friend’s  _ conquests. _

That Sylvain can still find it within himself to hug Felix after the way Felix melts into them is more kindness than a fucked up boy like him deserves.

“I don’t like anyone.”

“Bullshit. Nobody could blush as cute as you are just now and not be hiding something.” Sylvain’s insufferable smirk as he leans forward; his spoon jabs Felix’s cheek and Felix almost snarls. “C’mon, tell me, won’t you?”

“No.”

“Tell me. I’ve never asked for anything.”

“Bullshit.” Felix’s jaw is tight.

Sylvain chuckles. “Well, I’ll never ask for anything again. How does that sound?"

Felix’s gaze to the rivulets of neon down the diner windows, and he’s almost shocked to see that a world exists outside of them at all. Storm clouds thicken. A crack of thunder in the distance resonates inside Felix’s empty, dead chest.

(Felix lowers his gaze into the spoon that sits untouched upon the starched square napkin and the reflected face of Glenn looks back save those angry, orange eyes—)

“Both.” He clears his throat.  _ I think. _ “Happy now?"

“Very,” Sylvain says, and smiles so wide Felix wonders vaguely if his best friend might crack in two.

They pay with wadded up bills cast none too ceremoniously upon the scrubbed, mangled tabletop. They zip their jackets to their necks in preparation for the onslaught outside. Upon the curb, it stinks of soil and ozone.

The diner’s bell tinkles and subdues as the door whines shut behind them.

Felix looks up into the billowing clouds, muscles in his face held taut against the whipping chill. A flash of pearly lightning bisects the heavens. His fists are shoved deep down into the pockets of his impractical fucking jacket, the only one Rodrigue will allow him to wear even if it does nothing to stave away the creeping Faerghan chill.

It’s only seconds before the thunder blasts over them, a cacophony of tempo that Felix can feel down to the sinewy tendons of his ankles. 

When he turns to Sylvain, Sylvain is looking back at Felix with an inscrutable expression.

That face. Felix has been trained not to like that face. Not when he sees it at the most unthinkable times. Across the table in the cafeteria, when Felix disassembles his sandwiches for the tomato and the lettuce and a bite of bread. In the bitter early morning snow as they trudge the length to school and exhale clouds of frost that catch and freeze on their lashes. Across a noisy room that stinks of cigarettes and liquor as a tapped bottle spins.

It unnerves him. It undoes him. Felix shrugs the bag that carries his skates higher on his shoulder. 

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“Wait, Felix.”

Sylvain’s fingers catch Felix’s wrist, and the first thing he thinks is  _ oh, warm. _

“What the fuck do you want?”

Desperation. It burns in Sylvain’s eyes. Felix knows. He’s seen it before.

“Kiss me.”

Felix recoils.  _ “What?” _

He snatches his wrist from Sylvain’s grip. He takes a step, two, three back. Lightning cracks the ceiling of clouds. It illuminates Sylvain’s face.

He’s never looked more fucking beautiful.

Sylvain steps forward. “Kiss me.”

“No.”

_ “Kiss me.” _

“Why?”

“Hell, I don’t know.” And at the very least, Sylvain has the nerve to appear abashed. His hands, too, press deep into his pockets. He grins a mirthless smile and looks out at the rain. Neon reflections dash across his eyes. And Felix stands, and holds his breath, and tries to quell the merciless pounding of his pulse.

He looks at Sylvain. Sylvain looks into the storm.

The rain pounds an entropic rhythm upon the pavement.

Finally, Sylvain moves. He scuffs his sneakers onto the sidewalk, and barks a laugh. That cold smile tears open his face, and those prettyboy eyes Felix has learned to fucking  _ hate _ peer at Felix from underneath his bangs. He looks every part the role he’s chosen to play in his leather letterman jacket. And Felix feels other, again.

“I’ve always wanted to kiss someone in the rain,” Sylvain tells him, and shrugs.

Felix will not be dismissed.

“Go kiss one of your whores,” He spits back, mouth dry.

Rage. He tastes its umami in his mouth. He turns on his heel, and walks some paces away. Towards the towering wrought-iron gates of the Fraldarius estate and his father’s cold stare and a cell phone he won’t answer no matter how much he might want to when the night draws long and the lonely seeps into his fucking bones and he holds his arms tight around his body lest it crack apart for good. Touch. How long has it been since he’s been touched?

Sylvain touches him. Sylvain drags his fingers down Felix’s neck and twines together their pinkies as they walk to the bus. Sylvain holds Felix safe when the sky is falling.

If Sylvain wants to kiss someone for the sake of it, Felix won’t have it—he can’t.

Felix watches his best friend’s face go through the stages of grief. There’s rage. Displeasure. Acceptance. And Felix’s hands tremble at his side; his heart pounds a staggering tempo in his chest. His breath comes in bursts of steam that dissipate into the cursed night beyond.

Sylvain looks at Felix, finally, and the taut pull of his face is something harrowing. “Okay, okay. That was crass of me.”

“It was.”

“I should have said that I’ve always wanted to kiss  _ you _ in the rain."

Felix blinks; the gears that grind and grate in his mind slow to a halt. Even the rain freezes in the air; the orchestral storm overhead ceases. 

“Why me?”

“Well, it wouldn't be the first time.” Sylvain smiles, and takes a stride closer. “You remember, don’t you, Fe?”

They were eleven and twelve, and sprawled underneath the expansive blanket of Faerghan’s summertime sky, and Sylvain had taken Felix’s face in his hands and sworn he’d marry him one day, die with him one day. Felix remembers. His glare likely says as much Heat saturates porcelain skin.

“Why me—now?”

Sylvain merely shrugs. His smile is too false. Felix swallows again, swallows the rest of the mean, stinging words that rise like bile up his throat and taint his tongue with acid, and moves. He steps from the awning of the diner, away from the desaturated neons, into the street beyond.

Cold. Fuck. The chill sets in immediately. Freezing droplets of rain slide down Felix’s nose and neck and no matter how much time he spends perfecting his  _ axels _ at the rink, the self-imposed chill from the ice has never held a candle to Faerghus’ frigid winters. He glares at Sylvain and clenches his jaw tight lest the chatter of cold and adrenaline and fear give him away. And when Felix finds the nerve to speak again after their gazes have tangled, his voice is, mercifully, steady.

“What are you waiting for, then?"

Sylvain releases a breath that shudders and steams. His face asks if Felix is joking—his face shows doubt. The sort Felix isn’t used to seeing in matters like this. How many times has he been subject to watching his best friend kiss and touch with abandon, tear apart his ribs and expose his beating heart as though pleading for someone to take it out and crush it for him? And yet, when Sylvain approaches Felix, his hands wring, his face is drained of color.

“You sure?”

“Damned idiot,” Felix sends back, scalding. “Take it or leave it. I don’t care.”

“Never,” Sylvain breathes. He steps forward one more time, and they’re kissing.

Heat. It’s the first thing Felix feels. It’s the first he remembers from the last time they’d kissed, too, how warm Sylvain’s mouth had been along his, the odd taste of lip and the anxious churn in Felix's belly when it had struck him, and now is no different, oh no, just that now the heat is molten, that he is burning, that Sylvain’s warm enough to rival the sun and Felix is trembling.

Sylvain’s palms descend Felix’s abdomen. They grab his waist, taut. And oh, they  _ kiss _ , and Felix’s mouth is full of Sylvain’s tongue, and his fingers are tight in Sylvain’s hair, at the lapel of his stupid  _ fucking _ letterman jacket, at the front of his shirt, and he doesn’t know if he wants to push Sylvain away or drag him closer, seek the chill of the rain or shove his fingernails beneath Sylvain’s flesh until they find the sweet relief of wet hot blood.

They kiss, and it’s searing and full of teeth and Felix’s scrabbling and if Sylvain thinks he’s a horrible kisser, Felix can’t find it within himself to care, because Sylvain  _ made _ him this way, because that kiss underneath the stars was enough for Sylvain’s fingerprints to sink deep into Felix’s heart and since then he hasn’t wanted anybody else, not even a little. Not once.

Frigid rain wets Felix to the bone; his fingertips and nose numb. And yet with his world so full of the taste of Sylvain’s lips and tongue, he wonders vaguely if he’ll pay much mind to anything else again.

Their noses bump. Sylvain’s fingers catch Felix’s hand. His thumb presses deep into the meat of Felix’s palm. It aches. And were he not quite so cold, Felix might ask for more. To be torn into, made to hurt. This pain isn’t the permeating, empty sort that follows Felix, ghostlike, along the dead halls and muffled carpets of the Fraldarius manor. No. This pain is the sort that reminds Felix of the blood that still pumps wet and warm in his veins.

Felix has Glenn’s face. He has his mother’s eyes. He has his father’s name. But Felix has his own damned life.

They pull apart at the approach of headlights through the frigid downpour; together they step back underneath the awning of the diner. Sylvain’s teeth are chattering. Felix’s muscles pull taut and unpleasant in his shoulders against the onslaught.

“Okay?” Sylvain asks, breathless. Mirth is tangled up in each syllable. Idiot joy. “Hey.  _ Felix. _ Okay?”

“Okay,” Felix returns.

Okay. Incredible. Whichever. There isn’t a word that Felix can conjure to impress upon Sylvain how he feels his very foundations rattled. And so he opts not to talk. Instead, he returns the foolish smile Sylvain grants him. He tugs at the knot of hair at the crown of his head and resolves to wordlessness.

Sylvain’s fingers curl around Felix’s, and Felix leaps in surprise before allowing it, taking them back. 

Together, they look down the street that will lead them home. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter!](https://www.twitter.com/iliawrites)


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